Alibaba, stop selling child sex dolls, demands advocacy group
Collective Shout calls for help in new campaign
(UPDATE: Collective Shout has won this campaign – Alibaba told them “After being notified of such listings by Collective Shout, we have taken action to remove them and implement a number of additional measures to prevent the items being relisted.”)
Australian advocacy group Collective Shout has discovered large numbers of child sex dolls still being sold by giant online retailer Alibaba, despite claims it no longer lists such products.
Collective Shout revealed last week it had “found hundreds of anatomically correct life-like replica children” on Alibaba – available through 18 different suppliers.
“We found toddlers. And to our horror, we even found babies,” said Collective Shout in a recent Facebook post.
“The child abuse dolls sold by scores of sellers are described as ‘young girl’, ‘flat chested’, ‘mini’ … We were even sent videos demonstrating the particular ‘features’ of a child the size of a three-year old.”
This time last week, we came across a child sex abuse doll – offered to buyers on the mega online shopping site…
Posted by Collective Shout on Thursday, 16 July 2020
While Collective Shout’s social media campaign has received international attention, the group says Alibaba is still selling many child sex dolls (although some have been removed).
“After we exposed these products on social media, Alibaba Group Australia and New Zealand responded on Twitter, stating the items were in violation of their terms and conditions and that they were ‘looking into it’.
“But some of the sellers of child sex abuse dolls on the platform are marked as verified by Alibaba,” states campaigns manager Caitlin Roper.
Roper points out that this is not the first time Alibaba has been exposed for selling child sex dolls. A media investigation in January exposed a number of sellers, and a 2018 expose resulted in the company being forced to remove multiple listings.
“These lifelike dolls normalise and legitimise the sexual use and abuse of children.” – Caitlin Roper
Outlining the dangers of these dolls, Roper said: “Child sex abuse dolls are designed to facilitate users’ fantasies of raping a child.”
“This is not a victimless crime – these lifelike dolls normalise and legitimise the sexual use and abuse of children.”
She backs up her comments with a 2019 Australian Institute of Criminology report which found lifelike child dolls could lead to an increase in the sexual abuse of children.
Collective Shout – founded by Melinda Tankard Reist – is a grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls.
Following the success of previous campaigns, the group is calling on supporters to help them “get rid of these life-like rape fantasy dolls” by keeping “the pressure on Alibaba’s CEOs and investors”.
